David Cameron and class

Pasty-gate is a proxy for Tory angst about class, but class is a proxy for the anger of the Tory right

AS A rule of thumb, once the British political establishment is charging in a single direction, it is time to lope discreetly in another direction. For days now, the daily front pages have been crammed with devastating evidence that David Cameron, George Osborne and many of the government front bench are unusually rich and unusually posh, and spend some of their leisure time with party donors even richer (though rarely posher) than themselves.

There was Donor-gate, a solid, old-fashioned Sunday Times sting on a Tory fund-raising chief caught boasting that for £250,000 a bunch of fictitious businessmen could enjoy "premier league" access to the prime minister. There was "petrol panic" or was it Garage-gate, after a cabinet minister (suave, languid, posh, himself the son of a cabinet minister) advised motorists to stock up on fuel before a possible strike among fuel tanker drivers, and perhaps stow a jerrycan of petrol in their garages. Ooh, how out of touch can you get, chorused the British press? Doesn't he know that lots of voters don't have garages, and that besides it's illegal to store that much petrol in your home, and now—look—some petrol stations are running dry as panic-buyers ring the block, on government orders?

Now there is pasty-gate, or the alleged scandal that Mr Osborne (rich, son of a baronet) slapped extra tax on baked goods sold as hot takeaway food (including Cornish pasties) in last week's budget and then could not tell an inquiring Labour MP when he had last bought a pasty from Greggs, an iconic northern English chain of bakeries. Just when that story was running out of legs, Mr Cameron took time out from an Olympic press conference yesterday to wax lyrical about the last time he bought a pasty, from a branch of the West Cornwall Pasty Company in Leeds railway station.

D'oh, another own goal, chorused the daily commentariat, pursed lips warring with broad grins of glee. Doesn't he know? The West Cornwall Pasty Company's branch at Leeds station closed five years ago, and anyway, WCPC is a soft, middle-class brand, not like gritty, loveable Greggs.

Like a glacé cherry topping off a Greggs iced tart, the media day culminated with Ed Balls, the Labour shadow chancellor of the exchequer, inviting the television cameras to film him confidently striding into a branch of Greggs to order eight sausage rolls. These were not all for him it emerged (though he is a big chap, and in training for a marathon). Some were for the awkward, besuited southerner behind him who turned out to be his party leader, Ed Miliband.

The Westminster village is more or less unanimous today. These multiple foul-ups spell potential doom for the government. This, everyone agrees, is because a tin ear with pasties is a proxy for something bigger: the dangerous revelation that today's Conservative Party is run by toffs.

Here is today's Sun, warning that an extra 25 pence (40 cents) on the price of a hot pasty will destroy the Cornish pasty industry (while cheerfully ignoring the detail that VAT is already imposed on hot takeaway food, and that the budget change was designed to close a loophole mostly used by supermarkets and big chains):

slapping VAT on hot takeaway food is not a trivial issue, much as it may seem like it for rich men in Westminster.

It is a kick in the teeth for hard-up working people. And a potential disaster for those whose jobs may live or die on it. Like the 13,000 in Cornwall's pasty trade.

Mr Cameron needs to find the courage to reverse this unfair hike.

Or he'll find he's bitten off more than he can chew.

Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph'sstern voice of reason, argues today that the past two weeks may mark the moment when all trust and confidence evaporated in David Cameron's government, thanks to "the lethal combination of George Osborne's shambolic Budget with the shocking revelation that access to the Prime Minister and government policy is up for sale".

Mr Oborne identifies a larger problem, namely that Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne decided to ape New Labour's tactic of governing in opposition to their own party grassroots. Says Mr Oborne:

Cameron chose to define himself in opposition to his activists, going out of his way to pick needless fights – gay marriage is only the latest example

What is more, writes Mr Oborne, the prime minister downgraded the job of Tory Party chairman by splitting it into two posts, one administrative and one focussed on public cheerleading, with this latter post given to a life peer, Sayeeda Warsi. Mr Oborne senses another mistake there, arguing:

This was terribly unfair on Warsi; no great common sense is required to see that a white Tory male would have been far better placed than an Asian woman, however gifted, to sell the complicated Coalition message to a suspicious and resentful party

Also in the Telegraph, Benedict Brogan, a man well-connected in Downing Street, blogs that it is time to stop wheeling out plummy-voiced Tories on the airwaves, and praises broadcast appearances by the roads minister Mike Penning, a bluff ex-fireman:

It helps that when Mr Penning opens his mouth the words Notting Hill and Eton do not spring to mind. His appearance in the studios reminded us that the Government and the Conservatives in particular are short of talent that speaks the language everyday Britain, in the voice of everyday Britain... The past few days has illustrated the shortage of ministerial voices who sound like the rest of us

David Davis MP, a robust sort on the party right (and the man who was beated by Mr Cameron to the party leadership back in 2005) stuck the boot in on Radio 4 this lunchtime, declaring that hard-working aspirant voters look at the Conservative ministerial team and see "toffs":

They see them, all very well turned out, well-fed, they look like they're in a completely different world

You get the picture. I am sure that much of this analysis is true. At a time of austerity and economic gloom, it is self-evidently dangerous for political leaders to look out of touch. But I am struggling with the sense of surprise and drama that fills the papers and airwaves just now. Here are some reasons why:

- British voters have been looking at well-fed, well-turned out David Cameron and George Osborne for many years. It is not a surprise that they are toffs

- Most voters, come to that, think that David Davis is very well-dressed and well-fed. To his fans, Mr Davis is a bluff, grammar-school educated salt of the earth type, and a living rebuke to the metropolitan smoothies who have hijacked the Tory party. Most voters do not make those kind of distinctions. They also think that Ed Balls is posh, and Ed Miliband, and indeed all MPs

- Actually, in the case of Ed Miliband, it's worse that that. If George Osborne looks like he would be happier eating prosciutto and figs than a hot breakfast wrap, Mr Miliband does not exactly look like a Greggs regular. If I had to put on my patent class-vision goggles, I would have the Labour leader down as a North London organic sourdough type, the sort of man who does his vegetable shopping via the lucky dip of a weekly Abel & Cole organic box (good luck persuading the kids to eat kale)

- While I have my class-vision goggles on, isn't it a bit patronising to heap praise on Tory ministers solely because they have man-of-the-people accents? And what does Ben Brogan mean by ministers who "sound like the rest of us?" As it happens Mr Brogan sounds more or less like me, which means not a million miles away from Mr Osborne, like lots and lots of political journalists at Westminster. Most voters would call the lot of us well-fed and well-dressed

- And the Tory fund-raiser caught on film by the Sunday Times, Peter Cruddas, is a self-made Cockney who survived a violent, impoverished childhood in the East End of London to make his fortune. His impressive life-story and Cockney accent earned him not one jot of sympathy this week from the commentariat

- I am not sure that pasties are that precise a class signal. There are branches of Greggs all over the country now, including branches in Fulham or Chelsea which are positively thronged with public-school boys gorging themselves on cheap carbohydrates. Ask me to play word-association, and the word "pasty" to me says "railway journey" not "gritty". Though some railway pasties are a bit gritty, but in a different, more sadly literal way

- I am not even sure that being a toff and out-of-touch is an automatic catastrophe. The Queen has rarely been more popular than she is now, and I have never seen her in a branch of Greggs. The tabloids adore cheeky, cheery Prince Harry just now, and he has never had to worry about making ends meet at the end of the month

In short, it is not enough to argue that Pasty-gate, Garage-gate and donor-gate are proxies for being posh and out of touch. That is much too weak an explanation for the opprobrium being heaped on this government by MPs like David Davis, or Tory newspapers like the Sun or the Daily Telegraph. I think that the proxy is itself a proxy.

In the mouths of many Tories, "out-of-touch" and "metropolitan" means "not right wing enough". The Tory right dislikes Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne for ideological and cultural reasons. Why else the sudden mentions of gay marriage, and other totems of Cameroon modernisation? Since when did Baroness Warsi's race have anything to do with the budget?

I think the real charge is not that Mr Cameron is too posh, it is that he is too grand. Lots of Tory MPs think that their leader looks down his nose at their sturdy, old-fashioned views. They think that he has spent too long in places like Notting Hill, and wants to suck up to the sort of urbanites he meets at dinner parties, or on the sort of Cornish beaches that look like one giant spread from the Boden catalogue. They worry that he is too fond of the company of creative industry bosses, BBC chiefs, broadsheet commentators, actors and other suspect liberal sorts.

One last thought, to end another very long posting (sorry). None of this is to say that Mr Cameron has not had a bad week, linked to a sense that he is overly focussed on the interests of a few privileged backers. But I don't think the problem is that he sounds or looks like a toff, precisely.

One of the first things I wrote about Mr Cameron on taking up the job of Bagehot in 2010 and watching him interact with a room full of Manchester voters, was that he struck me as occupying a very particular spot in the British class system. He was not so much posh, I wrote, as officer class. He had that same self-confident, calm, courteous air of competence and self-assurance that you might encounter reporting in some war-zone, by pulling over to chat to a young Guards major leaning by a Land Rover.

That was greatly to his advantage, I suggested back then, because the clever thing about being an officer-type in the British class system is that you put a lot of people at their ease. It is not that an officer pretends to be the same as his men: it is understood that a gulf of culture, upbringing and possibly wealth may lie between them (indeed, soldiers loathe any chinless subaltern who tries to be their best friend).

But an officer must earn respect by being brave, competent, and bound by a powerful sense of duty. An officer may eat off silver in the mess back at barracks. But in the field, he is not supposed to eat until all his men have eaten, or retire to bed until his men are safely dry and under cover. An officer enjoys privileges, but is expected to lead from the front. Not for nothing have officers always died in disproportionate numbers, in wars throughout British history.

I think Mr Cameron's current problem is not that he angers the Tory right. Distancing himself from the right is a conscious strategy he chose long ago, in the belief that elections are won and lost at the centre. The right would say he lost the 2010 election as a result. The Cameroon camp would say they lost the 2010 election because the work of detoxifying the Tory brand was not complete. They will doubtless still be arguing about that as they head into the 2015 election.

I do think that Mr Cameron has to burnish his officer's credentials. His fault during donor-gate was to look shifty, and to wait too long before releasing details of the party donors who had dined with him in Downing Street and Chequers, fuelling the sense that he had something to hide.

Like a company of weary soldiers huddled in a chill rain, the British are not enjoying austerity and worse is to come. Mr Cameron must convince them that he puts their safety, comfort and interests ahead of his own. He must ensure his men are fed before he eats, and under cover before he sleeps. Once he has done that, whether he chooses to dine on a pasty or tinned caviar could not matter less.

Readers' comments

. "Mr Cameron must convince them that he puts their safety, comfort and interests ahead of his own. He must ensure his men are fed before he eats, and under cover before he sleeps. Once he has done that, whether he chooses to dine on a pasty or tinned caviar could not matter less."

Lovely piece, up until this point. I assume you are continuing the metaphor and are referring to Cameron as part of a class rather than as an individual. If so, the political equivalent of ensuring your men are fed before you eat and undercover before you sleep, is to cut taxes for the poor before cutting them for the rich. Cameron/Osbourne's policies are totally at odds with this noble picture. I couldn't care less if they sound posh and eat diamond encrusted lobsters as long as their policies don't poisonously favour other people who do at the expense of everyone else.

"Mr Cameron must convince them that he puts their safety, comfort and interests ahead of his own."

Well, that will be hard because it is not just a presentational issue, is it?

Btw your military metaphor is lovely but I suspect, not quite right. When I was in the (swiss) army, officers went to bed whilst part of the troop stood guard. It might be different in the British army but I struggle to imagine officers almost tucking their troops under the duvet.

My wife went to a really nice restaurant as a special treat when she left work, shortly before the birth of our children. This was the night of the leadership debate before the last election. David Cameron turned up in the bar. I guess he gets to go to these sorts of places all the time. Now that we've got two kids and we're down to one income, I guess we won't be. And there was the redundancy...

So what if he dines off silver plates? I'm sure he was very brave when he went into battle with Gordon Brown & Nick Clegg.

There are many problems with the military metaphor. Not least that "brave politician" is an oxymoron.

The real reason the toff issue is such an issue is because of the slogan "We're all in it together."

"Brave politician is an oxymoron"? The electorate get the politicians you deserve. If you disdain all politicians then why would someone of character go into politics?

You are utterly wrong to say that. I know it is tempting but to think like that is a bad idea. Bertie ahern a man i despise and is a corrupt devil was a brave politician. He took many a personal political risk to bring peace to N.I. . I can separaten my disgust at his politics from the fact he was brave politically on the north.

I am tempted to think this "anti-toff" rhetoric is doing the Tories a favour in strategic terms. Labour now think, with their typical arrogance assuming they speak for the people, that all they have to do now is to wage a class war. They will paint themselves into the unelectable left corner while today's anti-toff headlines will be tomorrow's chip paper.

Presumably because there seems to be zero political appetite for parties espousing that kind of reform? It's hard enough to get them fired up about finishing off Lords reform, what makes you think anyone want to remake the shape of government?

I think Will Crooks MP put it best over a hundred years ago.
"The Labour Party is quite a natural result of the failure of rich
people legislating for the poor." Still rings true today doesn't it?
I read that here: www.jimsbooksite.com

In this blog, our Bagehot columnist surveys the politics of Britain, British life and Britain's place in the world. The column and blog are named after Walter Bagehot, an English journalist who was the editor of The Economist from 1861 to 1877. The blog is currently on hiatus after a change of Bagehot columnist.